Bernie Sanders.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW - Interview

Bernie Sanders, the independent, socialist Representative from Vermont, is poised to win the Senate seat vacated by Jim Jeffords in 2006. According to the Associated Press, Sanders has received donations from 100 times as many Vermont supporters as his likely opponent, the self-financed, Bentley-driving corporate executive Rich Tarrant.

An outspoken critic of the Patriot Act, the first lawmaker to take a busload of constituents to Canada to buy prescription drugs, the leader of a successful effort to block the Bush Administration's plan to slash worker pensions, and an economic populist with crossover appeal to Vermont's rural dairy farmers as well as liberals in Burlington, Sanders is the kind of down-to-earth grassroots candidate willing to oppose the Republicans in no uncertain terms. Without taking corporate PAC money, he has managed to win against better-financed Republican opponents again and again. In 1996, when Newt Gingrich put up a well-financed candidate to unseat him, Sanders won reelection with 55 percent of the vote.

In September, Sanders came to Madison, Wisconsin, for "Fighting Bob Fest"--a progressive rally held annually in memory of Robert M. La Follette, the great Senator who helped usher in the Progressive Era. I caught up with Sanders at a hotel in downtown Madison, where he was preparing to speak to a group of lawyers at a fundraiser for his campaign and that of a fellow opponent of the Iraq War, Representative John Conyers.

Unlike many of his colleagues in Washington, Sanders has an utterly unassuming manner. Any other candidate for national office might arrive with an entourage, or at least an aide in tow, and think nothing of coming an hour late. Sanders tramped into the hotel lobby looking slightly windblown, having made the three-hour drive by himself from the airport in Chicago. He had called my cell phone to apologize, saying he was running behind by ten minutes.

He spoke earnestly, in his native Brooklyn accent, about the state of national politics and his own race for the Senate, refusing to put a rosy spin on things, cautioning that the troubles facing the Republicans don't mean an automatic win for their opponents. There's a lot of work to be done, he said, but progressives are right on the issues, and represent the true interests of a majority of Americans. The only thing to do, he said, is to get out and talk to our fellow citizens--especially those who don't already agree with us.

Q: What does Hurricane Katrina tell us?

Bernie Sanders: I think Katrina is one more indication of how inefficient and corrupt this Administration is, and indicates the absolute lack of seriousness that Bush has in making the government respond to the needs of the people. He is there primarily to give tax breaks to billionaires, to do the service of large corporations. This is just one more powerful, dramatic, painful example of the incompetence and lack of concern...